I never grew up imagining my wedding day. I never even thought about weddings. I knew all about it and I have been to more weddings than is possible. I come from a culture where marriage is important and we take our weddings to heart. I also happen to have been born into a minority that takes massive pride in everything that surrounds us. We are raised differently. We have strong roots and we rarely stray from our paths. Even so, my parents were easy on me. They let me grow up the way I wanted to. I had all the freedom I wanted. In all honesty, I was a good child. I did my bad girl thing and I’ve been done with it. But they never punished me or were hard on me.

Like I said, I never ever even considered a wedding in my plans. I know my parents wanted if for me, the perfect life as seen by others. But somehow no one ever came close to feeling right. So I never thought about marriage. I’ve dated since I was 16. More than half my life, I am 33 with the risk of stating my age- as women have been indoctrinated to not mention age and weight. Well, I am 33 and I am getting married.

Not only did the gods, destiny and everything Paulo Coelho talked about in the Alchemist bring me to where I am, I even can say with 100% certainty that I was blind and I can’t imagine my life to be anyway else. Since I mentioned the Alchemist, I remember being very young when reading it, but I remember a quote;

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”

I thought I knew everything, I thought I understood everything. In a way I did, for all that I was at that age- I knew enough.

I lived my life in the pursuit of my own happiness. Sure, I am a philanthropist at heart, I believe in humanity and I believe we are good at the core. But deep, deep down I was looking out for me, and just me. We all do this, whether we admit it or not is irrelevant. We want good things for us more than we do for other.

Years passed. Still, no thoughts running around for a wedding on my mind. Still just all about me. Then one day the cynical, witty, smart-mouth that formed “me” found the right soul at the right time. He spilled beer on my suede ankle boots. Ironical he doesn’t even drink. I didn’t even get mad as my normal, usual self would have. I take fashion with coffee and seriosity. I did notice him tho.

Timing is another thing. I had met him briefly less than a year before but I was to into my own plans. I was about to spend 8 months in New York, 7000 km away from where he was. So if I had seen him for what he truly is, an amazing soul, I would have been apart from him for over 8 months. A lot can happen in 8 months, especially with people that do not have a bond between them already set. It’s hard even when they do.

I left. Ran around Manhattan, had fun, worked at the exact place I would have only dreamt about. Life was great. Then I had to return to Europe for a wedding. Had the perfect dress. I began considering New York as my future home, I always have. I grew up in New York, went to school here. I was going to go, tan, have fun, club-hopping around and return to the Big Apple. The wedding came and we were both invited, we are both closely related to the bride. I noticed him, noticed me from the first moment.

At this time in my life, I had told myself that I would date like a mad girl, something I never truly did, nor enjoyed in all honesty. But I did. My romantic life was a crazed phase of different persona types. My life was so agitated even I couldn’t keep up. My phone was on silent most of the times. I am a Samsung gal, not like the iPhone people that keep their phones on vibrate all the time. So a vibrating phone or a silent phone has a different meaning for a Samsung Gal. FYI for you iPhone fans, my other half is an iPhone user. There is a balance between our connection. He has battery life, i have the better camera, together we have the perfect phone.

In all that craze, in all that agitation that was my life, everything stopped when we started talking. He was this beautiful, full of life agitated gentleman that just stood out from all the others. He had jokes, but best of all – He got my jokes. He got me.

Fast forward over a perfect year later and here we are getting ready for our wedding. I never wanted to get married. I never imagined it could be so natural and feel so good. I judged the house of matrimony and I was wrong. Here we are, getting married.

Part one.